


The Adventures of Hemlock Volmes

by Mint_and_Cinnamon



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Canon Compliant, Comedy, F/M, Gen, Light-Hearted, Parody, Sherlock Holmes ripoff, Slice of Life, Vimes Goes Spare, i had so much fun writing this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 17,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24752215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mint_and_Cinnamon/pseuds/Mint_and_Cinnamon
Summary: Someone is writing Sherlock Holmes style detective stories about Vimes and he HATES it.That's it, that's the plot.
Relationships: Carrot Ironfoundersson/Angua von Uberwald, Sybil Ramkin/Samuel Vimes
Comments: 63
Kudos: 134





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is pure nonsense on my part, but boy did I have fun doing it.

_“By Io, Volmes! Do you really mean to say that Lady Arbuthnot was the true culprit all along?”_

_“Indubitably, my dear Turnip,” expostulated Volmes, lighting a cigar. “Surely even you must have realised that the loam found upon the escritoire was planted there, if you will pardon the pune, to throw suspicion on young Jerrinks, the gardener.”_

_“By Io!” Turnip said again, mopping his red forehead with a handkerchief. “But why on the Disc should Lady Arbuthnot want to stage her own kidnapping?”_

_The great detective’s eyes sparkled. Sir Hemlock Volmes strode over to the library shelves, his proud military bearing evident in the masterful way he selected a slim red volume from his eminent family’s collection. He opened it to reveal a family tree, and held the book out to his faithful companion._

_“All the answers lie within this tome, Turnip,” he said. “It is quite obvious to any man with his wits about him. Had I not been thrown off the scent by my lady’s cunning bit of subterfuge with her pet peacock, I should have arrived at the conclusion a good deal earlier.”_

_Turnip frowned at the book. “A…” he began, “Hist-or-i-cal Re-cord of the Em-in-ant House of Bl…Blick – no, Blen-kin-sop…” He looked up. “Blenkinsop, Volmes? But that’s…”_

_“Precisely, my dear Turnip!” cried Volmes, throwing on his cloak. “And so you see that we have no time to lose!”_

* * *

“What’s that you’ve got there, Corporal?”

Corporal Ping closed the Ankh-Morpork Times in a flurry of pages, slamming both his hands on top of the newspaper. Sergeant Cheery Littlebottom was looking at him from the doorway of the forensics lab, an interested smile fixed firmly in place while her eyes darted to the paper and back.

Ping tried to look keen. “Checking the paper, Sergeant,” he said, sitting up a little straighter. “You know, looking for leads and tips and that.”

Cheery’s smile was still in place. “I don’t think they usually print those,” she said.

“Taking the temperature of the streets?” Ping tried.

“You’ve usually got to be outside to do that,” said Cheery. “Come on. It’s just a paper.”

Ping handed over the newspaper, his heart sinking. Cheery set her mug of coffee down on the duty desk – it read DWARFS DO IT SLIGHTLY LOWER DOWN – and began to flick through. He knew the moment she’d found it: her eyebrows shot up so fast they disappeared under her iron helmet.

“Oh dear,” Cheery said.

Cheery kept reading, her brow furrowing. Every so often she glanced up furtively, checking to see who was looking her way. When she had finished she folded the paper shut and tucked it under her arm, as though she wanted to keep it out of sight.

“Who else has seen this?” she asked.

“Quite a lot of people, Sergeant,” Ping said. “Everybody reads the paper these days and this is part five of _A Study in Lots of Red Blood_ …”

“I meant who in the Watch has seen this?”

Ping fidgeted.

Cheery sighed. “You don’t have to give me the names, Corporal. Just a number will do.”

Ping looked visibly relieved. “A few dozen of us, Sarge.”

“A few _dozen_? Oh dear. Oh, dear. Has Commander Vimes heard about this?”

Ping went white. “You won’t tell him, will you Sarge?”

Cheery picked up her mug, tucking the newspaper further out of view as she did so. “I don’t think I will, Corporal,” she said, “but he’ll find out sooner or later.”

She turned to leave. Ping cleared his throat. “Er…could I have that back, Sarge?” he asked, the tips of his ears going red. “Only they were just about to reveal how Lady Arbuthnot kidnapped herself and I’ve been waiting all week…”

Cheery considered him. “All right,” she said. “You can get it back when you go off shift. I don’t think it’s wise to read it where the Commander might see it, do you?”

* * *

His Grace, His Excellency, The Duke of Ankh Commander Sir Samuel Vimes stood in front of Lord Vetinari’s desk in the Oblong Office, going through the daily briefing. Not, he reasoned, that the Patrician really needed to be briefed. The man seemed to know what Vimes was going to say while the thoughts were still forming. Sometimes he wondered if Vetinari only asked him for a briefing because he was being polite.

“…and of course they’ve sunk the damn boat again, but that’s nothing new,” he finished. “We can have a replacement up and running in a couple of weeks, I’d say.”

“And this is the –” The Patrician leafed through some paperwork. “– fifth boat that the River Division have managed to sink this year? I say managed, Commander, because as all Ankh-Morpork children know, the river Ankh develops a crust in summer. One would think it would be quite difficult to sink a boat in a river one can crack with a spoon.”

“Well, yes, sir, you would think that.”

“In that case, you must commend your men for their ingenuity.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The Patrician considered Vimes for a moment. Vimes was used to this, and was only slightly unnerved. He was confident that the Patrician could glean nothing from his expression – he was wearing the carefully blank look that he had developed after years of dealing with authority – but still, he wondered. How much did Vetinari know?

“Tell me, Commander,” Vetinari said, “have you been reading anything good lately?”

Vimes blinked at him. “Sir?”

“I asked you if you have been enjoying any good books, Commander. An anonymous author has become the talk of Ankh-Morpork literary society; I wondered if you had heard of their work.”

“I…I read to Young Sam, of course, but…excuse me, sir, but why did you ask me this?”

The Patrician studied him for a split second and then waved an elegant hand. “Simply making conversation, Commander. Don’t let me detain you.”

Vimes saluted and left the office. A few moments later Drumknott came in, clearing up the paperwork on Vetinari’s desk and handing him a fresh batch of files for the next meeting. “You didn’t tell him, my lord?” he asked.

“As you can tell from the absence of shouting, no doubt,” said Vetinari. “No, Drumknott, I have not told the Commander about his literary counterpart. Work will begin on the tunnels for the Undertaking shortly and I would prefer that he is not distracted.”

“I’m sure that’s for the best, my lord,” said Drumknott, primly squaring off the edges of the files.

Vetinari allowed himself a thin smile. “I’m sure it is.”


	2. Chapter 2

_“…but our visitor is not, my dear Turnip, the humble Omnian priest he claims to be. Is that not correct, Prince Wilhelm?”_

_Turnip – so named because his squat, sturdy body was rather shaped like one – goggled at his friend and mentor. “But Volmes! How can you –”_

_The tall and stately visitor tore off his wide-brimmed hat and threw himself into an armchair. “Your reputation precedes you, Volmes,” he said bitterly, his accent beginning to slip. “Vot vas it that gave me avay?”_

_Volmes passed the prince a brandy and water and began pouring one for himself. “It was quite clear, Prince Heinrich. Your cassock has been rather hastily tailored to fit your larger frame – note, Turnip, the seams just under the arms – and your boots have been polished to a military shine. You have neither the stance nor the temperament of a scholar, and your vowels are somewhat more rounded than is traditionally known in Lancre. But Your Majesty, the real giveaway was in your noble mien, which immediately makes itself known to all men of breeding.”_

_Volmes made a small bow and Turnip, stunned, applauded. Prince Wilhelm looked mollified. “And the business vith the chicken did not convince you either? Vell, I expected nothing less than the greatest detective in Ankh-Morpork. And now, Volmes, to business. I most urgently require your services…”_

* * *

“Here they come!”

“What? Now?”

“Quick! Sit on it!”

There was a flurry of activity inside the watch house. Corporal Ping, who had been reading the first instalment of _A Scandal in Borogravia_ aloud, quickly sat on the newspaper. Corporal von Humpeding, stationed by the door, sauntered over to the lockers looking carefully nonchalant. The rest of the squad immediately hunkered over their paperwork, began polishing their armour, or in the case of Constable Flint, sat on their clubs. Within seconds the watch house was a silent tableau, every watchman frozen in the act of not looking suspicious at all.

The door swung open.

“And then I said – bit quiet in ’ere, Sarge.”

Sergeant Fred Colon and Corporal Nobby Nobbs stood in the doorway. Their eyes moved between Constable Bluejohn, who had frozen with his mug of toll coffee halfway to his mouth, to Constable Shoe, who was sewing some fingers back on and not meeting their eyes, to Corporal Ping, who looked like he wanted to disappear inside his own helmet. The only watchman who looked remotely at ease was Corporal von Humpeding, but she was a vampire. They looked at ease upside-down.

Fred and Nobby exchanged A Look. There was a moment of silence. Sergeant Colon gave Nobby the tiniest of nods. Then he proceeded forwards, nodding at everyone he passed.

“Morning Reg, Sally, Ping. Any news of that burglary up at Dolly Sisters?”

At once, the watch house juddered back into life. Constable Reg Shoe hurried forward. “The Thieves’ Guild have been round, Sarge, and they’ve got no record of a job planned for Dolly Sisters that night.”

Colon tutted, loudly. “Unlicensed thieving. What is the city coming to, eh Reg? Terrible business. Ping?”

Corporal Ping looked up. “Yes, Sarge?”

“You lived round Dolly Sisters when you first came here, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Sarge.”

“Know the area well, then?”

“Think so, Sarge.”

“Pop along and see what you can find out. Take Bluejohn and Visit with you. About time you had some leadership experience.”

Corporal Ping flushed with pleasure and jumped out of his seat. “Yes, Sarge, thank you, Sarge! Er…let’s go, then?” he said, turning to Bluejohn and Visit.

They marched out of the watch house, neither one of them noticing Nobby Nobbs sidling up to the duty desk and pinching the still-warm newspaper from Corporal Ping’s empty chair.

* * *

Commander Vimes sat in his office, pouring over a map of Ankh-Morpork. The first few tunnels for the Undertaking would be dug over the next few weeks, and it was his job to close the streets while work was ongoing without, to quote the _Times_ , ‘stemming the flow of the economic lifeblood of the city’. The rumour going around was that when Otto Chriek had read that particular line in the editorial, his expression had glazed over and he had spent fifteen minutes monologuing about iconographic plates.

“Lifeblood,” Vimes muttered. “Gods.”

Not that the tunnels would actually be dug, of course. As far as he could tell, they would be widened, ventilated, and generally scrubbed up a bit before the first rails went down. The tunnels themselves were already down there; part of the ancient warren of old Ankh-Morpork streets that had been built over centuries ago. Which was bloody convenient, Vimes thought. No sense digging about in the muck when there was a perfectly good tunnel right there.

There was a splutter of horrified laughter from somewhere beyond his office door; the locker room, if he was any judge. Nobby was probably doing tricks with his spots again.

The trouble was going to be the entry points. Vimes had them marked on his map already: large sites marked in red squares that would need to be cordoned off to the public while the access tunnels were dug. And of course, they weren’t neatly tucked out of his way – oh no. They were at the Hubward Gate, Pseudopolis Yard, right outside the Post Office building – in short, the busiest streets in Ankh-Morpork.

There was a muffled _thump_ from the locker room and a voice yelled “You _what_?” It was Nobby’s voice, and Vimes paused to listen for a moment. Usually, when Nobby did the zit trick, he wasn’t the one who ended up shouting.

He went back to the map, frowning. If traffic couldn’t go through Pseudopolis Yard, he could always redirect it down Scoone Avenue and across Maudlin Bridge, but the difficulty would be stopping idiots with carts full of stuff from deciding that the Misbegot Bridge was bound to be quicker. It was far too close to the Shades to be –

There was the sound of running footsteps from outside his door. Vimes tensed. Something was wrong.

There was a very nervous knock.

“Come in!”

Nobby sidled into the room, grinning. “Morning, Mr Vimes!”

“Morning, Nobby. What is it?”

Nobby’s eyes were fixed on Vimes’s desk. His face had gone white.

“I just came to see if – cor, bit chilly in here, isn’t it?” he said, rubbing his skinny arms. “Brr!”

Vimes stared at him. He’d never heard anyone actually _say_ ‘brr’ before.

“You’ll catch your death in ’ere!” said Nobby, shuffling over to the fireplace. “You done with the paper, Mr Vimes? Gizzit ’ere. I’ll have this going in no time.”

Vimes tugged out a copy of today’s newspaper from the strata of paperwork on his desk. “Here you are.”

Nobby froze. “You…you’ve not _read_ it, have you?” he asked, his voice little more than a whisper.

“’Course I’ve read it!” said Vimes, unable to keep the defensiveness out of his voice. “Well…most of it. The important bits, anyway.”

Nobby sagged. He snatched up the paper, grabbed a section of pages from the middle and threw them on the fire. He handed the rest of the paper back, naked relief on his grimy face. “That’s what I always says about you, Mr Vimes,” Nobby grinned, “there’s a man who knows what the important bits are.”

Vimes’s eyes darted to the flames and back. The pages had gone up in seconds; there was no getting them back now. “Well…thanks, Nobby. Send Carrot up here when he gets back, will you?”

Nobby fled the office and hurtled back down towards the locker room. Curious, Vimes opened up the crumpled paper. Nobby had ripped out the culture section – a part which he only paid attention to when Sybil mentioned it – and now only a scrap of paper remained. Vimes smoothed out the creases and read:

_The next instalment of_ A Scandal in Borogravia _continues in tomorrow’s_ Times _. Printed and bound copies of_ A Study in Lots of Red Blood _will be made available for purchase at the behest of the Guild of Publishers. Enquire at the Sign of the Leech off Short Street to get your copy today…_

Vimes put the paper back down. It didn’t seem like anything to worry about.


	3. Chapter 3

_“Look here, Turnip!” cried Volmes, gesturing to the small pile of ash alongside the remnants of the glass case that had once contained the Seriph’s missing diamonds. The ash was white, flaky, and contained small, twinkling particles that flashed red and yellow in the light._

_“It’s ash,” said Turnip, mopping his sweating face with a spotted handkerchief._

_“Ash from a troll cigarette, no less,” said Volmes, crossing the room in unnaturally long strides as he measured his paces. “But observe the divots in the floors, Turnip. These are clearly intended to_ look _like troll footprints, but if one measures the distance –” He took another unnaturally long step. “– it becomes clear that these are paced within the limits of a human legspan. No, Turnip, I do not believe that a troll has ever been in this room at all.”_

_Turnip’s mouth fell open. “But Volmes!” he spluttered, “how on the Disc can you explain the state of the Seriph’s inner sanctum?”_

_“Observe,” said Volmes, holding up a finger. “The false top of the desk has been lifted with a fine blade, one too delicate for trollish hands. The carpet has clearly been trodden by human feet; there were a few fragments of glass swept underneath when the case was smashed, and these would have been crushed by heavy troll feet. And then, of course, there is the marmalade.”_

_Turnip smacked his forehead. “Of course! The marmalade!”_

_“But most telling of all, my dear Turnip, is this.”_

_Holmes bent down and pulled out a blue-green object from underneath a chair. It glinted in his fingertips as he held it up to the light. It was a dragon scale._

_“The facts lie before us, Turnip. Someone intended this to look as though trolls stole the Seriph’s diamonds – a clever piece of subterfuge to throw us off the scent. In reality, they had entered the embassy with the rest of the party guests, performed that ingenious bit of trickery with the marmalade and penetrated the Seriph’s inner sanctum. Strapping a pair of heavy weights to their feet, they paced about the office to leave troll-shaped footprints, smashed the glass case with a well-aimed kick, and left a trollish cigarette smoking on the cushion to add to their disguise. They then left the inner sanctum with the diamonds concealed about their person, leaving the theft to be discovered only when the party guests had retired for the evening.”_

_Turnip goggled at the great detective. “But that’s genius, Volmes!”_

_“Indubitably, my dear Turnip.”_

_“And do you know who this notorious thief is?”_

_Volmes smiled at the dragon scale clutched in his fingers. “Why yes, Turnip. I believe I do…”_

* * *

Colon stood in front of the blackboard, balancing on a chair so that he could be seen from the back of the crowd. Usually containing the daily rota, it had been flipped around and pushed into the canteen of the watch house for the impromptu lecture. Almost every watchman in the city was staring at it, some of them taking notes, tongues clamped between their teeth.

“Right,” said Colon, tapping the board with his truncheon. “Point number one: don’t give him a standard paper. You take out the culture section _before_ it gets put on Mr Vimes’s desk and you burn it.”

The watchmen scribbled.

“Point number two –”

“More like point number one-bee, Sarge,” said Nobby, helpfully. “’Cos it’s still talking about the same –”

“ _Point number two_ ,” said Fred Colon, “is that there’s no unedited papers hanging round the watch houses neither.”

There was a groan from the assembled watchmen.

Colon bristled. “I’m not saying you can’t read it, but you’ll have to read it outside.”

“But Sarge! What if it’s –”

“Whichever one of you wants to read it inside, you can be the one to explain the plot to Mr Vimes,” said Colon. “’Course, _I_ don’t mind if you want to talk him through it, Constable, _I_ won’t get in your way if you –”

The luckless constable ducked back into the crowd.

“Right,” said Colon. “Point number three –”

“Two, Fred.”

“Three, _I think you’ll find_ , is that Mr Vimes is not to hang about near the _Times_ offices if we can help it. Nor the Guild of Publishers. In fact, if any of them comes up to the watch house we…we’ll think of something. But he’s not to talk to them, d’you hear?”

Corporal von Humpeding raised her hand. “You can’t keep it a secret forever, Sarge. Besides, what are we going to do about Captain Carrot?”

The squad stared at her.

“Oh come on,” said Sally, throwing up her hands. “He’s clearly supposed to be Turnip. At least Mr Vimes is portrayed as a character who gets stuff done. But Captain Carrot…”

The door opened. The entire mess hall froze in place as Captain Carrot strode inside. He looked around, surprised, and took off his helmet.

“Oh dear!” he said. “Have I missed a meeting?”

Fred Colon slapped a hand on the blackboard and smeared as much of the writing as he could. “Er…no, not as…er…”

Carrot peered at the blackboard. The writing was smudged, but still legible. The watchmen held their breath as they watched Carrot’s lips moving as he read.

Then, he smiled.

“Oh! This is about those funny little stories in the _Times_!” he said, his expression clearing. “Mr De Worde mentioned something about those. Apparently they’re doing quite well.”

Sally leaned forward. “Er…Captain, have you…have you actually…”

“Oh yes,” said Carrot, heading for the tea urn. “Angua says that Turnip fellow is supposed to be me, but I don’t see the resemblance. He’s not even a dwarf! I can’t say I mind, though. I suppose I ought to be flattered, really.”

Carrot filled up his mug, stirred in the sugar and took a long sip. Then, he frowned.

“But why did you all want to have a meeting about that? Haven’t you got other things to do?”

Colon shuffled his feet. “Mr Vimes doesn’t know.”

“Well then, we ought to tell him,” said Carrot, “I expect he’ll be pleased to –”

The assembled watchmen jumped to their feet and lurched towards the door, blocking Carrot’s path.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Captain –”

“He’ll go _spare_ –”

“No, no, no, no, and _no_ …”

Carrot’s mouth fell open. “I can’t believe this! Surely you aren’t all of you suggesting that we _lie_ to our commanding officer? And about something as silly as this?”

Fred laid a hand on Carrot’s shoulder. “Think of it like this, lad,” he said, quietly. “It’s not lying if you never, ever talk about it.”

* * *

“Is that –”

“Yes. Yes! Go on.”

“What? You said _you_ would ask him!”

Vimes closed the door to the Oblong Office and pretended not to hear the whispering. It happened, every so often. The palace guard were not, by and large, impressionable men, but now and then they got a raw recruit still green enough to be impressed by the Hero of Koom Valley. Vimes could hear them think the capital letters at him as he passed, and cringed every time. It had been seven years, maybe eight, since the Koom Valley incident – and _when_ had those years slipped by, surely it hadn’t been that many – and he had hoped that by now, people might have forgotten it.

Deciding to ignore the recruit, he started down the corridor – and saw no recruits in sight. The guards posted outside the door were familiar, and, he noticed, weren’t looking him in the eye. The only other people in the corridor were Mr Rudolph Potts, head of the Bakers’ Guild, and Mr Antimony Parker, head of the Merchants’ Guild. Both of them were staring at him and whispering.

Mr Parker raised a hand. “Sir Samuel?”

“Just Commander, thank you, Mr Parker. What can I do for you?”

Mr Potts nudged Mr Parker in the ribs. Mr Parker winced. “I, er, I hear you caught an unlicensed thief the other day.”

Vimes frowned, confused. “Up at Dolly Sisters? Yes, the lads brought him in all right. You don’t have a shop round that way, do you, Mr Parker?”

“No, no,” said Mr Parker, waving his hands frantically. “Just wanted to say, er, ‘job well done’. Um.”

“Thank you?” said Vimes.

Mr Potts nudged Mr Parker again. “Commander Vimes always gets his man! Was…was it an easy arrest, Commander?”

Vimes stared at the two guild leaders. Mr Potts was frantically nudging Mr Parker, apparently too embarrassed to open his own mouth. Mr Parker had a manic light in his eyes and a rather desperate smile on his face. In Vimes’s experience, people rarely spoke to the Watch to pass the time of day; you spoke to the Watch for a reason, and that reason was usually to find out how much the Watch knew. Vimes could spot an informant or an over-confident suspect at twenty paces, but standing in front of the guild leaders, he was left with the uncomfortable impression that they were waiting for him to say the punchline to a joke he hadn’t told.

“What’s this all about?” he asked.

“Nothing!” said Mr Parker, “nothing at all! Absolutely nothing. Those unlicensed thieves, eh? They’ll never get past you, eh? Eh?”

He raised a hand as if he was going to slap Vimes on the back. Vimes stared at it until Mr Parker lowered his hand. “I hope not. Excuse me.”

He left. As he walked down the corridor, he heard the two men arguing.

“You _said_ you would get him to say it!”

“ _You_ could’ve done something! Anyway I couldn’t just _ask_ him, could I?”

Vimes frowned. Something was wrong.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a bit where characters read and comment on the Hemlock Volmes story in this chapter. Just for clarity, the big sections in italics are extracts from the Volmes stories, and normal text is what's happening in the real world.
> 
> Enjoy!

_“…and so you see, Inspector Bowlen, you have arrested the wrong man. Troll.”_

_The expression of honest puzzlement cleared from Inspector Bowlen’s face, to be replaced by one of complete amazement. “Why blow me down, Mr Volmes! You’ve made it all seem so clear.”_

_“Indubitably, my dear Bowlen,” said Volmes, magnanimously offering Bowlen one of his custom-made cigars. “I can see how a policeman of your calibre would have made such a mistake, but it can’t be helped. Trot along and let him out, there’s a good fellow.”_

_Bowlen went down to the cells, still shaking his head in amazement. The moment he was out of the door, Volmes turned to Turnip with a gleam in his eye._

_“Stand at the door, Turnip,” he whispered, “and sing out if anyone comes near. Now that friend Bowlen is away from his desk, I intend to confirm a theory.”_

_Turnip lumbered over to the door, looking worried. “What are you going to do, Volmes?”_

_“Why, search his office, of course.”_

_“But Volmes!”_

_Volmes ignored him, opening drawers at random and rifling through the papers. After a moment’s shuffling, he emerged with a case file clutched in one hand. He tore through it, his face lit with nervous energy as he read._

_“As I suspected,” he said, slipping the file back into its drawer, “this is not the first incident linked to Prince Wilhelm. His coachman was robbed, left only in his underwear; his carriages have three times been diverted by mysterious roadblocks; Embassy property has been ‘mislaid’ while sent out for cleaning. The theft of his gift to the Seriph is merely the latest in a string of events. Someone is deliberately targeting the prince.”_

_“The scoundrel!” cried Turnip. “What kind of man would be so lacking in propriety as to target a member of a royal family? Surely only the lowest of the low would dream to offend those noble personages…”_

_“You’re quite right, Turnip,” said Volmes. “As you know, my family has always supported the monarchy –”_

“Oh gods,” said Nobby. “It’s a bad one.”

_“ – has always supported the monarchy, and you may count me among its first defenders.”_

Colon winced. “He won’t like that.”

_“But on this occasion, my dear Turnip, I must correct you. I know exactly what kind of man would do this – or rather, what kind of_ woman _.”_

_Turnip goggled at him, spluttering slightly. “But surely a_ lady _would never dream of such things!”_

_Volmes smiled, rather nostalgically._

_“Not_ this _lady. Turnip, unless I am very much mistaken, I believe I shall soon have the very fine pleasure of introducing you to Lady Ysabell de la Rommekine.”_

“Oh no,” said Carrot.

Nobby brandished the paper at him. “D’you see what I mean? There’s no telling what’ll happen now they’ve brought Lady Sybil into it.”

Carrot ran a hand through his hair. “No, he’s not going to like that at all.”

Nobby tossed the culture section of the paper onto the fire. Colon watched it burn, rather thoughtfully.

“But we can’t just _lie_ to him,” Carrot said, sounding slightly desperate. “Half the city’s reading this! What are we supposed to do, march round to the _Times_ and make them hide every paper?”

“It won’t come to that,” Nobby soothed, “we’ll just…just get all the lads selling papers to stay away from the watch houses every day, and get any old copies cleared up before Mr Vimes sees them, and –”

“I don’t like it, Nobby,” said Carrot, “I really don’t. I don’t want to lie to my commanding officer.”

“It’s not _lying_ ,” Nobby wheedled, “not _tech_ nic’ly. Not if you don’t actually say the actual lie out loud. Hiding the evidence and keeping the witnesses away and maybe giving them a bit extra for their trouble, that’s not _lying_ …”

Carrot threw up his hands. “No, Nobby, it’s bribery! I tell you, I won’t do it.”

Carrot got up, heading for the door. In desperation, Nobby played his last card.

“Lady Sybil would be Upset if she found out.”

Carrot froze, one hand on the doorknob.

The watchmen had never seen Lady Sybil upset. She was always gracious and kind whenever she spoke to them, and could sit through several rounds of Nobby’s zit tricks without flinching now. But they always knew when she had been Upset. When Lady Sybil was Upset, a shadow descended over Commander Vimes, rolling over the watch house like a storm. Nothing was ever said, but constables scurried out of his path, the chatter was muffled in the mess hall, and even the street-sellers outside kept their voices down.

Nobby suspected that an Upset Lady Sybil would not, actually, be all that bad. She had never struck him as the kind of woman who would shout or cry. She would just be very quiet, very composed, and very, very Upset, and deep in the marrow of his bones he knew that would be A Terrible Thing.

Carrot sighed. “I don’t like this at all, Nobby. I don’t think I can do it. I’ve never been good at lying.”

Nobby patted him on the shoulder, stretching a little to reach. “Just you leave that to me. Keep yourself busy enough, and you won’t have to say anything at all.”

Carrot nodded and left, his shoulders slumped. Colon was still staring into the fireplace.

“Nobby,” he said, eventually, “that Bowlen character was made up, right?”

There was a split-second of silence.

“Oh yeah, ’course he was,” said Nobby. “No-one we know.”

Colon relaxed. “Yeah, yeah, right. He wasn’t very good at his job, was he?”

* * *

The business with the guild leaders had been at the back of Vimes’s mind all day. He stared at the map across his desk, trying to focus on the plans for the Undertaking, but whenever he started thinking about roadblocks and redirections his thoughts kept circling back to the conversation in the corridor. Someone was keeping something from him; he could smell it in the air.

He gave up on the map and went over the facts again.

The two guild leaders – men who he rarely spoke to – had cornered him to congratulate him on catching an unlicensed thief. But this was a standard Watch operation, and one that he hadn’t really been involved in. Constable Dorfl had made that arrest – if you defined ‘arrest’ as ‘holding out a clay arm that hit the thief like an iron bar when he ran into it’. It hadn’t even been a notorious thief; a couple of muggings and one burgled shop was not exactly the work of a master criminal.

No, the guild leaders had been looking for an excuse to speak to him. But unlike most men who had committed a crime, they did not tread carefully around a particular subject, failing to realise that that made it all the more obvious. No, they had been trying to get him to say something…

Vimes sat back in his chair, thinking hard. That hadn’t been the only strange thing. There was that business with Nobby and the paper, and the Patrician had asked him about literature. And now that he thought about it, more people seemed to be looking at him lately. Perhaps young Jane Gordon had put another book out. She had dedicated _Pride and Extreme Prejudice_ to him last year, and Vimes had been flattered, if a little embarrassed at all the attention that followed.

Even as he thought it, he knew that wasn’t it. Sybil would have told him, and in any case it wasn’t the same kind of attention. Before, people had simply been curious. Now, they were hiding things from him.

“Carrot!”

There was a flurry of whispering from downstairs – Vimes caught the phrase “it’ll be fine, just like we practiced” – and then Carrot entered, marching through the door like a toy soldier. He gave a perfect salute in front of Vimes’s desk and stared straight ahead, his lips pressed together so tightly it looked like he was holding his breath.

Vimes stared at him. “You all right, lad?”

Carrot saluted again. “Sir!”

“…Right. Close the door, would you? There’s something I want to discuss.”

Pure panic flashed across Carrot’s face. He saluted again, marched to the door – and this time the whispering came from the corridor.

_“It’ll be fine it’ll be fine it’ll be fine”_

Carrot shut the door, a rather glassy-eyed expression on his face. He strode back to the spot in front of Vimes’s desk and saluted again, keeping his eyes fixed on a point almost a foot over Vimes’s head. All of Vimes’s senses were screaming. Something was wrong.

“Something’s up, lad,” he said, unconsciously steepling his fingers the way Vetinari did. “Why don’t you tell me about it.”

“A lot of things are up, Commander,” said Carrot, his voice too cheerful. “The ceiling, the sky, some birds probably, the stars…”

Vimes cut across the list. “I mean, Captain, that I know you aren’t telling me everything.”

Carrot was still staring directly over his head. “Well, I don’t tell you everything, sir. You’ve always said that what goes on between me and Captain Angua is none of your –”

“It’s not that,” said Vimes, waving away the details before he started going red. “It’s –”

But Carrot had launched into a speech. “Well this morning I got up at five and went for a quick bout in the training grounds, then I bought breakfast for Angua and me at six because we’re both on the early shift this week, sir. Then we walked to Pseudopolis Yard the long way round because it was a nice morning and because old Mrs Proust has been having some trouble when she opens up the shop in the mornings, so I thought I’d look in just to…”

“All right, all right!” snapped Vimes. “Captain, when I say that you aren’t telling me everything that does not mean I want to read your damn diary.”

Carrot looked hurt. “You could’ve said that, sir.”

Vimes took a deep breath. “What I mean is this: I know that people, and I suspect that you are one of them, have been keeping something from me. Something that involves a book. Now, here’s what I want you to do. You’re going to tell me everything you know about this book and why my Watch has been hiding it from me, and then we’re going to put it behind us and move on. Right?”

Carrot’s lips were moving frantically. A fine sheen of sweat lay across his forehead. And then, his expression cleared.

“I don’t know anything about a book, sir,” he said.

Vimes got to his feet, leaning over his desk. “Is that right?”

“No, sir, not a book…”

“Something else, then,” said Vimes, “something – something in the _Times_ , is it?”

Carrot’s face went white. Then, the door burst open and Nobby hurtled into the room.

“It’s twenty to six, Mr Vimes, and there’s traffic on The Cut,” he gabbled. “You’d better leave now or you won’t make it back to Scoone Avenue for six.”

Vimes snatched up his helmet at once. “What! Why didn’t anyone tell me?” He snatched up his cloak and turned back to Carrot, who was pale and sweating. “This isn’t over, Captain,” he said, and marched out to read to Young Sam.

He made it back home with five minutes to spare – the traffic on The Cut hadn’t been anywhere near as bad as Nobby had made it sound – and Young Sam had barrelled into the drawing room clutching his books at six o’clock, a _Young Natural Historian’s Encyclopaedia_ nearly catching Vimes in the groin. They read several chapters together, and Vimes nodded along as Young Sam started planning an extravagant trip to Fourecks to collect all the animals’ poo he could find; evidently his collection was severely lacking.

“…and you can come too, Dad,” he finished, “but only if there’s room on the boat.”

Vimes closed the encyclopaedia. “I’ll curl myself up into a ball, how about that?”

Young Sam was escorted up to bed and Vimes was escorted into dinner by Lady Sybil, who had taken one look at him and decided that a sandwich would not do; a proper meal was in order.

“D’you know if Jane has another book out, dear?” Vimes asked, as he helped himself to more mashed potatoes.

Lady Sybil looked at him meaningfully until he put down the spoon. “I don’t believe so,” she said. “When last we spoke she was still working on the next. Why do you ask?”

Vimes told her about what had happened at the Watch House.

“Oh, that,” she said, when he had finished. “It’s nothing for you to worry about, Sam.”

Vimes laid down his knife and fork. “D’you mean _you_ know about this as well?”

“Oh, yes. But really, dear, it’s not worth the fuss. You’ll just get yourself into a tizzy.”

“Sybil, I am Commander of the City Watch. I do not get into _tizzies_.”

“If you say so, dear.”

They finished their meal and Lady Sybil went upstairs with a kiss. Vimes went into the library, trying not to stomp his feet. He didn’t want to give Sybil any grounds to accuse him of being in a tizzy.

Willikins was already there, a non-alcoholic cocktail already mixed. He handed it to Vimes without a word.

“Thank you, Willikins.”

“Of course, sir,” said Willikins, as Vimes sat down. “Should you find yourself in need of a little reading material,” he said, producing a copy of that day’s _Times_ , “I believe you will find this most interesting.”

Vimes took the paper and frowned. “What’s this –”

Willikins had already left. Willikins _never_ left.

Vimes put down his drink and stared at the newspaper. Carrot knew. Willikins knew. Even Lady Sybil knew. And none of them had told him. How many other people were keeping this secret? He read the motto under the crest of the paper: _the truth shall make ye frep_. Well, he thought, perhaps his time had come for frepdom as well.

He opened the paper and began to read.

Moments later, the shouting started.

“ _WHAT?_ ”


	5. Chapter 5

_Volmes and Turnip crept into the darkened ballroom of the embassy upon silent feet. The room was deserted, save for the single marble plinth in the middle of the room, upon which rested Prince Wilhelm’s collection of finest Klatchian sapphires._

_“Remember the plan, Turnip,” Volmes hissed. “Secure yourself behind that pillar yonder, while I –”_

_“_ Dear _Commander Volmes –”_

Vimes choked on his non-alcoholic cocktail and inhaled a piece of ginger, coughing.

_“_ Dear _Commander Volmes,” a mysterious figure said as it emerged from the shadows, “there’s really no need for you to put in all this effort just for me. You are always welcome at my soirees, you know. And you, I assume, must be Captain Turnip.”_

“Oh gods,” Vimes muttered.

_A lady dressed all in black swept across the ballroom floor. She was tall, voluptuous, and with magnificent hair, her tightly-fitted dress glittering in the moonlight. She gave Volmes a dazzling smile._

_Volmes clicked his heels together and bowed. “Always a pleasure to see you again, my lady.”_

_“I’m sure it is. I assume you are here on behalf of the prince?”_

_“Regrettably so, my lady. I could not stand idly by while you impugned the honour of that most sacred and noble of institutions, the monarchy.”_

“What?” snapped Vimes, the paper crumpling underneath his fingers.

_“I surmised as much,” the lady continued, fitting a cigarette into a long holder. “But I suppose I could expect nothing less from a man of your background. Classically educated at the School of Assassins –”_

Vimes gave a sharp intake of breath. His cigar flared.

_“– trained by the most noble officers in the Ankh-Morpork army –”_

Vimes took in a much larger lungful of cigar smoke than he meant to and spluttered. The cigar dropped out of his mouth; he caught it before the paper could catch.

_“– and, of course, the sole heir to one of the most illustrious aristocratic families in the land.”_

Vimes crushed the cigar in one hand.

_“You have the measure of me, my lady,” said Volmes with another bow. “But you must know why I am here. I cannot let you leave with those sapphires, and the Prince most urgently desires the return of his diamonds.”_

_The lady laid an elegant hand on the plinth. “But my dear Hemlock –”_

“Hemlock?” muttered Vimes. “ _Hemlock_? That’s a bloody vegetable.”

_“But my dear Hemlock, these are_ my _sapphires.”_

_Volmes raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”_

_“Of course, Prince Wilhelm would not have told you – not with his marriage so soon to take place. Dear Wilhelm bought those sapphires for me.” The lady held the jewels up to her face. “They are the exact shade of my eyes.”_

_Volmes bristled. “Dear Wilhelm, is he?”_

_The lady laughed. “Hemlock, darling, you are_ such _a treat when you’re jealous.”_

_Volmes gave a little cough and took out a cigar and a lighter. “Be that as it may –”_

_“Allow me.” The lady whistled –_

“No,” said Vimes.

_The lady whistled, and a tiny, blue-green dragon came swooping down out of the eaves of the ballroom._

“No!”

_She snapped her fingers and at once, a jet of flame spurted from the little creature’s mouth. Volmes lit his cigar –_

“NO.”

_– and gave the lady a debonair smile._

“Gods!”

_“Turnip,” said Volmes, “you must forgive me. In all the excitement, I appear to have forgotten my manners. Do allow me to introduce you to a very old and dear friend: Lady Ysabell de la Rommekine.”_

“WHAT?”

* * *

“I told you you would get in a tizzy, Sam.”

Vimes paced around the drawing room like a caged tiger, brandishing the paper in one hand. Lady Sybil, wrapped in a fluffy blue dressing gown, was leaning against the doorframe with her arms folded. Everyone else had run for cover.

“You don’t _understand_ ,” snapped Vimes, waving the paper at her. “Whoever wrote this has done it _on purpose_.”

“Yes, dear, that’s generally how these things work. Keep your voice down. You’ll wake Young Sam.”

Vimes’s stomach lurched. “He doesn’t know about this, does he?” he whispered.

“Of course not. He doesn’t read the paper.”

“ _Yet_ ,” Vimes muttered darkly.

Lady Sybil came into the room, closing the door behind her. “Would it really be so bad if he did?” she said, lifting the paper out of Vimes’s hands. “It isn’t as if these stories are slandering you. Volmes is a decent man, very intelligent, and always polite to ladies.”

“And he’s condescending, and pompous, an entitled little twit, and rude, and ‘classically educated’, and he acts like he’s better than everyone, and –”

“And fictional,” said Lady Sybil, in a firm voice. “Really, Sam. Why does it matter? Anyone who knows you knows that this character isn’t an accurate portrait. It’s satire at most, nothing to worry about.”

“And everyone who doesn’t know me will think this _is_ what I’m like,” Vimes muttered. “It’s just…”

“Just _what_?”

Vimes hesitated. Satire, he could live with. He had been in enough political cartoons for it not to bother him much. But this was different. It was not just that everything about the character seemed to be the exact opposite of all the things he believed in – ‘that most sacred and noble of institutions’, _honestly_ – but now that he thought about it, that was quite a large part of why Volmes bothered him so much. It felt personal in a way that he couldn’t quite pin down. _Too_ personal, he realised. Everyone was going to be looking at him and thinking that he was in on the joke – they already were, because those two guild leaders had already tried to get him to say that stupid catchphrase. And after all these years of trying to teach his watchmen that you didn’t have to have a pedigree as long as your arm to be a good officer, and that Clues were not the same as evidence, they were all going to be looking at him and wondering if, despite everything he’d said, he was just like Volmes.

The thought stuck in his throat. He tried a different tactic.

“You’re in this one,” he said.

“Oh! Lady Ysabell’s made her first appearance, then?” said Sybil, opening up the paper eagerly.

“I just don’t want people speculating about – what?”

But Lady Sybil was already reading. Within a few moments, she was blushing, a smile tugging at one corner of her mouth.

“Well,” she said, laying the paper aside, “I’m quite pleased with how I came out of that.”

“You _are_?”

“Of course! ‘Voluptuous, magnificent, dazzling, elegant’ – who wouldn’t be pleased?” She came towards him with a gleam in her eye. “I’m not completely immune to flattery, you know.”

Suddenly, about half of Vimes’s anger evaporated. He floundered for it. “I…I just think that our private life should be kept, well, private…”

Lady Sybil stopped. “Are you really upset?”

Vimes considered. The firelight was playing across Sybil’s face, and with the neck of her dressing gown just a little bit more open than it had been before, the word ‘voluptuous’ suddenly seemed a lot more appropriate.

“Not _that_ upset,” he said, taking her hand.

They went upstairs.


	6. Chapter 6

_“…but unless I miss my guess, Your Majesty, I believe such draconian measures are not in order.”_

_The Prince pointed a finger at Volmes. “Draconian measures! I’ll show you draconian, Volmes…”_

_Quite calmly, Volmes reached behind the prince and pulled open a drawer. It should have been locked, but it opened smoothly, revealing a great rope of glittering diamonds._

_Prince Wilhelm goggled at them. “By Io! How did you –”_

_“Lady Ysabell is not immune to reason, sire. She and I were able to reach a compromise. She will be keeping those sapphires, but I wager that is a small price to pay for peace with the Klatchian Empire.”_

_A strange look passed over Prince Wilhelm’s face: half resentful, half nostalgic. “She von’t be punished, then?”_

_“No,” said Volmes, his voice curt._

_“Vell, I suppose I ought to thank you, Volmes,” said the prince, extending a gloved hand. “Your services have been satisfactory.”_

_Volmes shook the prince’s hand with a smile. “Your Majesty, I wish I could say the same about you. Do allow me to see you out.”_

_Volmes handed the prince his hat and cloak and showed him to the door of the Volmes estate. The prince strode down the path to the wrought iron gates, looked both ways, and stepped into the street – whereupon he was promptly kicked in the royal prerogative by a rather feminine-looking youth in a soldier’s uniform…_

“Oh please,” said Vimes, “that was years ago! And I wasn’t even there. Not for the actual kicking, anyway.”

Vimes was sitting up in bed, stewing over the final instalment of _A Scandal in Borogravia_. Lady Sybil was at her dressing table, choosing that day’s wig.

“I thought we agreed that you weren’t going to worry about those stories, dear,” she said, mildly.

“But they’re just so –”

Vimes caught sight of her expression in the mirror and stopped.

Lady Sybil sighed, adjusting her wig. “I can see you’ve got the bit between your teeth, Sam, so I won’t try to stop you. But _really_. I can’t see the harm in it and I think you’re being very silly.”

Vimes laid aside the paper and got out of bed. “Just don’t send down to the _Times_ for the originals, please. It’s bad enough with the cartoons.”

“No need to worry about that,” said Lady Sybil. “The Guild of Publishers are selling bound volumes at a very reasonable price. They’ll look much better on the library shelves than newspaper clippings.”

* * *

Vimes stalked towards the Watch house in a terrible mood. Every time he passed a newspaper seller he had to fight the urge to snatch the paper out of their hands. _Hemlock Volmes_ , he thought, and he could hear the mutter in the way that he thought it.

This explained everything. Vetinari’s comment, Carrot and Nobby acting so strangely, those two guild leaders trying to get him to say that stupid catchphrase – and what sort of a catchphrase was ‘indubitably, my dear Turnip’ anyway? Had anyone ever actually met a person who said the word ‘indubitably’ out loud? Also, he was pretty sure that hemlock was a kind of vegetable, and the only person he’d known that was named after a vegetable was Broccoli, and she worked down at the Pink Pussycat Club. _Hemlock. Really._

Vimes turned into King’s Way and slouched moodily down the street. It was no good. He was going to get to the Watch house and they would all know, and he would know that they knew and, worse, they would know that _he_ knew, but nobody was actually going to say anything because that would be really, really embarrassing. And that was only going to make it worse, because then they would spend the whole day very carefully tiptoeing around Hemlock Bloody Volmes and it was going to be all he ended up thinking about.

Much better to be a man about it and get it out of his system. He’d have a quiet word with Fred, Nobby and Carrot, and then they could all put this behind them.

And then, he could get on with the real business of the day: finding out who wrote those bloody stories.

Vimes banged open the door to the Watch house – he’d nearly kicked it, he was in such a foul temper – and every watchman froze. There was Captain Angua, smirking and turning away. Cheery had buried her face in her mug of tea. Constable Visit had frozen halfway through eating an egg sandwich, Sergeant Haddock suddenly ducked behind the desk to ‘tie his shoelaces’ and worst of all, Constable Ping was completely immobile, a copy of the _Ankh-Morpork Times_ clutched in his sweaty hands.

There was total and utter silence. Vimes stalked through it, his ears burning. He climbed the stairs up to his office, Sybil’s words ringing in his head – _“I thought we agreed you weren’t going to worry about those stories, dear”_ – and stomped up to his office, his carefully darned socks rubbing with every step. He closed his office door and slumped into his desk chair.

The worst part of it all was that Sybil was right. They _were_ only stories. No actual crime had been committed. He had no grounds to go marching into the _Times_ offices and demand that they tell him who had written them; stories were stories, and that was all.

Still, there was no harm in just _checking_ who wrote the damn stories. Whoever was writing them clearly knew exactly how to get under his skin. The author, whoever they were, knew him well, and clearly held a grudge because otherwise they wouldn’t have put in so much effort to irritate him. He ought to keep an eye on a person like that. Just in case.

“Fred! Nobby! Carrot!”

They came barrelling through his office door. Fred lurched in like a puppet on a string, Nobby had a desperate grin on his face, Carrot’s face was pale and he was refusing to look Vimes in the eye. Vimes felt a little twinge of guilt when he saw their faces, but only a small one.

“I know about the stories,” he said, as Carrot closed the door behind him. “I don’t blame you for keeping them from me.”

All three of them relaxed. “You don’t mind then, Mr Vimes?” Fred asked.

Vimes didn’t answer. “You did what you thought was best. I’ve only got one question for you, and then we can put this all behind us.”

“Anything at all, Mr Vimes,” Nobby gabbled, “ask away, you just ask away.”

“Where the hell is Throat?”


	7. Chapter 7

_A collection of objects were laid upon the escritoire –_

“Escritoire?” said Vimes, his voice dripping with disdain. “It’s a bloody desk!”

_– a broken model of the Disc according to Ancient Ephebian beliefs, three small blue eggs, a small test tube full of white powder which Volmes had carefully swept up from the floor, half a brick, a stuffed bear with its stomach slit open, and a loose collection of gravel. Volmes stared at them all in turn and, after a few minutes’ silence, let out a great peal of laughter._

_“But of course!” he ejaculated, “why did I not see it earlier! This explains everything.”_

_“It does?” asked Turnip, frowning at the clues upon the escritoire._

_“Indubitably, my dear Turnip,” said Volmes._

Vimes ground his teeth together.

_Volmes strode over to the Baron’s broken window. “The half-brick was thrown through the window in order to gain entrance to the Baron’s inner sanctum. Upon breaking the glass the half-brick struck and damaged this model of the Disc, from which we can deduce that the assailant must have been about six feet tall; a shorter man would not have had the reach. The assailant then climbed through the window, depositing gravel across the study floor which must have been lodged in his shoes. Examine it more carefully, Turnip, and you will note that this particular gravel is pure white – and therefore most likely to be used in aesthetic landscaping, as opposed to construction purposes. Upon gaining access to the study, our unknown thief proceeded to rifle through the desk drawers but evidently did not find what he was looking for: what other reason could he have to slit open the stomach of a stuffed toy, except that more conventional hiding places did not bear fruit? There he found what he was looking for, but in the process, this white powder was shed across the study floor – clinging to his clothes, no doubt. As my acid test has shown, this is clearly one of the components for special-formula fertilizer. Turnip, we are looking for a man about six feet in height with a good strong throwing arm, likely a gardener at one of the larger country estates. He would be familiar enough with the Baron’s habits to know about his predilection for stuffed bears, but not discerning enough to know the value of some of the Baron’s antiques.”_

_Turnip gaped at Volmes in sheer amazement. “And the eggs?” he spluttered._

_There was a brief pause._

_“Why, put there by our mysterious thief, of course,” said Volmes, “in a cunning attempt to throw me off the scent.”_

“Oh _please_ ,” Vimes snorted. “Cunning, my –”

“Sorry to interrupt, sir, but you were shouting.”

“Was I? Sorry, Carrot.”

Vimes laid aside the paper before he threw it and peered out of his office window. There were several newspaper sellers outside, but no-one with a tray full of suspicious pies. This was a bad sign. Vimes was sure that Throat was involved in the Hemlock Volmes stories somehow but if he had stopped selling pies, he was clearly in much deeper than he thought.

“What have you found out?” he asked.

“Well, sir,” Carrot began, “Detritus has had word that there’s a new supply line of Slab coming into the city. The Breccia have been quiet, but…”

Vimes let the details of Carrot’s report wash over him, chewing the inside of his cheek so he wouldn’t interrupt. When Carrot had finished, he forced his voice into nonchalance and said “Anything else?”

Carrot looked pained. “Throat’s not been seen selling his pies for the past few weeks, sir. He’s got a new venture up near Seven Sleepers.”

Vimes leaned back in his chair, barely suppressing a grin. He _knew_ it. “Seven Sleepers? Posh part of town for Throat.”

“Well, you know what he’s like. Maybe this time whatever he’s tried is paying off.”

Vimes got up. “Seems to me the responsible thing to do would be to drop in. You know. Make sure there’s nothing…funny.”

“I don’t know about that, sir. His lordship wants your proposal for crowd management for the Undertaking by the end of this week, and –”

“And I can’t do that from behind a desk,” said Vimes, putting on his cloak. “Got to see how it’s all going on in the flesh, as it were. And besides, you know as well as I do that Throat has always got his fingers into _something_. Seems like I ought to check up on him. Make sure there’s no occult stuff going on. You weren’t here for that business with the moving pictures, were you, lad?”

“No, sir, but I really think –”

“Right. I was going that way anyway. And I’ll just drop in on Throat, while I’m passing. Just in case.”

“Sir –”

Vimes was already gone.

* * *

Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler’s new office was not near Seven Sleepers; it was on the street itself. It was a large building which reeked of plaster dust and new paint, which Vimes could smell long before the gleaming office came into view. Vimes’s heart sank. Usually, Dibbler’s various business enterprises operated out of Monkey Street in the Shades. He’d moved out of those digs when the moving pictures had got going, and Vimes remembered with a shudder how those had turned out.

Vimes strolled into the office. A vampire receptionist was sitting behind a desk and that was another problem. Vimes wasn’t sure if Dibbler was paying for the vampire’s charm or their supernatural strength, but either way, he was going to be paying a lot.

The vampire smiled at him. “Good morning, sir. How may I assist you?”

“Where’s Throat?” Vimes snapped.

The vampire’s smile remained in place. “Mr Dibbler is in a meeting, Mr…”

“Vimes. _Commander_ Vimes. Just you tell him I’m here. He’ll see me.”

The vampire scurried off, leaving Vimes in the pristine lobby. The smell of paint and plaster was even stronger in here, but underneath it Vimes could detect a hint of grease. It made him feel strangely relieved – clearly the pie business wasn’t completely abandoned.

“Sammy, baby!”

Vimes turned and _stared_. Dibbler strode into the room, his arms thrown wide. His suit was new, there were rings on every finger, and his shoes gleamed, but his mouth was stretched into a rictus grin and there was a hint of desperation in his eyes. Dibbler walked forward, still smiling, so Vimes turned up the stare a few more notches.

It worked. Dibbler faltered. “Always a pleasure to see you, Commander Vimes,” Dibbler said. “What can I –”

“You know why I’m here, Throat.”

Dibbler’s eyes flicked towards the vampire and back, who was pretending to file papers. “Step into my office.”

Dibbler led Vimes down another freshly painted corridor and into a spacious office. It smelled of new wood and was dominated by a desk with a sage-green leather top – clearly Throat was sparing no expense, Vimes thought – and a vast drinks cabinet on one side of the room. But the thing which immediately caught Vimes’s attention were the row of pictures on the wall.

They all showed black and white sketches of the same two people. One was a short, spherical man with puffy red cheeks and a bowler hat perched on top of his head. The other was tall, thin, with slicked-back hair and an air of magnanimous superiority that made Vimes want to punch the drawing. The drawings were clearly meant to be exciting – the two men were staring, shocked, into mysterious treasure chests, or pointing significantly at a bloke dressed in a sheet – but when Vimes looked at them, all he felt was a crushing embarrassment that made him want to curl up and hide inside his own shoes. All of the images were frontispieces for books, and each one had _The Adventures of Hemlock Volmes_ scrawled across the top in big letters.

“So,” said Vimes, “it’s you, then.”

Dibbler retreated behind the desk at once. “I…I don’t know what you –”

Vimes leaned forward. “It’s you, Throat. _You_ are the author of Hemlock bloody Volmes, aren’t you?”

“Now, look, Commander – here. Have a cigar.”

“I’ve got my own. Answer the question.”

Dibbler gave Vimes a greasy smile. “Are you sure I couldn’t persuade you to –”

“Answer the _question_ , Throat.”

Dibbler sat down heavily. “All right. You want the truth, Commander? I didn’t write those stories.”

Vimes slammed his hand onto the desk. “Bullshit!”

“It’s true!” Dibbler protested. “I’ve had my fill of messing about with words after that business with the _Inquirer_. If there’s one thing I learned from that, it’s don’t let yourself get written down.”

Vimes fixed Dibbler with another stare. True, the Hemlock Volmes stories did not match up to Dibbler’s stories in the _Inquirer_. For one thing, they were almost five times longer. In his time as a journalist Dibbler had understood what his readers wanted: the strange, the saccharine, and above all, the short. Vimes had no doubt that Dibbler could’ve written Hemlock Volmes if he’d set his mind to it, but why bother, when there were so many quicker ways to make money? The author had been writing in weekly instalments for months, slowly building up an audience. Dibbler did not do slow when there was money to be had.

Vimes nodded to the pictures on the wall. “But you are involved.”

“Not as the author, Mr Vimes. That’s not where the money is.”

_Ah_ , Vimes thought.

Dibbler spread his hands. “The author of Hemlock Volmes wishes to remain anonymous. But they still want their stories to be published. So they appointed me to approach the _Times_ and work out a deal where their stories would be printed in weekly instalments. The _Times_ pays me, I pass that back to the author –”

“While skimming something off the top for yourself, eh?”

“ – while deducting a small amount for necessary business expenditure,” said Dibbler, smoothly. “And then it all gets bigger. The Guild of Publishers want to do printed versions of the Volmes books, so they pay me, the _Times_ gets worried about the _Inquirer_ so they pay more for new Volmes stories and then, word gets around that I’m the man to see if you’ve got a book you want in print and _more_ people try get me to sell stuff for them. I don’t even have to _read_ the bloody things!”

Dibbler’s eyes were gleaming. He looked, Vimes realised, like the cat who had got not just the cream, but an exclusive 15% interest in all milk rendered. It was more than a little unnerving, but he pushed the thought away. “Right. Great. I need to speak to this author of yours.”

“The author is very busy,” Dibbler said automatically. “These Volmes stories don’t just land on their doorstep. What did you want to see them about?”

Vimes ground his teeth. “You know what, Throat. About Hemlock bloody Volmes. About the _total coincidence_ that his Captain friend is named after a vegetable, that his wife breeds dragons, that –”

Dibbler pulled out a piece of paper. “Any resemblance in the Hemlock Volmes stories to beings living or dead or neither is entirely coincidental and are products of the author’s imagination or presented in a fictitious manner or all and/or none of the above,” he read. “Neither the agent nor the author nor the publisher accepts any responsibilities for interpretations of the work, see paragraph 2 subclause ii, which alters the content in –”

Vimes glared. “You’ve been talking to Slant, haven’t you?”

Dibbler looked sheepish. “A man’s got to look out for his own interests, Mr Vimes.”

“Oh, gods,” Vimes groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Say,” said Dibbler, his tone suddenly oozing, “how would you feel about setting the record straight? You’ve been on the force for years, you must have a story or two to tell. Rooftop chases, swinging on ropes, solving clues. The true-life memoirs of the _real_ Hemlock Volmes…”

“I am the real Hemlock Volmes!” Vimes snapped. “I mean, Vimes! Vimes, obviously. Hemlock Volmes is a figment of some writer’s imagination…”

“…and any resemblance to beings living or dead or neither is entirely coincidental,” Dibbler finished with a grin. “Think about it, Mr Vimes. I could get you a very handsome advance from the Guild of Publishers. Cover price royalty, too, and all I’d ask for is a thirty percent stake in the…”

Vimes picked up his helmet. “Absolutely not.”

“Ah, well,” said Dibbler. “Worth a try. You…you wouldn’t be interested in making any public appearances as Volmes, would you? Dress up a bit for the kiddies?”

Vimes left.


	8. Chapter 8

_“Stop!” cried Volmes, bursting through the parlour door. Inspector Bowlen started backwards in surprise, nearly dropping the handcuffs as he clapped Bjornsson the gardener in irons._

_“Why, Volmes,” the Baron opined, as he put down his brandy, “this really is most irregular.”_

_Turnip came huffing into the room behind Volmes, clutching a stitch in his side. “You must pardon the interruption, my lord,” said Volmes with a bow, “for I fear a grave miscarriage of justice may be about to take place.” He pointed at Bjornsson. “This dwarf did not burgle your study, sir.”_

_The Baron’s younger brother threw up his hands. “Preposterous, Volmes! Who else could have done it?”_

_Volmes closed the parlour door. “Who else indeed, sir. My suspicions were first aroused when I first espied the gravel upon the study floor. One might suppose the gravel that had been caught in a man’s – apologies, in a dwarf’s boots to show some discolouration from the streets, but this specimen was clean. Then, of course, there was the stuffed bear: how would Bjornsson, a dwarf who had little contact with the Baron, know that he used his collection of soft toys to hide his valuables? Of course, the angle of the broken glass could fit with Bjornsson as the thief – I had hypothesised that the thief was six feet tall, and Bjornsson is unusually tall for one of his race.”_

A smile dawned on Carrot’s face like the rising sun. “There!” he said, giving Angua a nudge, “I told you I couldn’t be that Turnip fellow. We’re nothing alike, and he’s not even a dwarf.”

Angua patted him on the knee and got out of bed, mostly so that Carrot couldn’t see her face. This Hemlock Volmes business was really starting to get on her nerves. She could _smell_ when Sally had read the latest instalment.

_“But we return, as ever, to the issue of the eggs. They were, of course, not connected to the heist in any way at all and were by no means a useful clue – gentlemen, they had been placed there to throw me off the scent.”_

_The Baron frowned. “This is all perfectly fine, Volmes, but my brother saw Bjornsson cutting open the stomach of Mr Bearikins –”_

_“Yes,” said Volmes, pacing towards the Baron’s brother. “Your brother is the only witness to Bjornsson’s alleged participation in the crime. Your brother, the prominent bird naturalist. Your brother, the notorious dwarfophobe. Your brother, who stands six feet tall, was the javelin-throwing champion at the School for Assassins, and who has had a lifetime to study your habits.”_

_A deathly silence fell upon the study. The Baron’s mouth fell open. “Volmes! What are you saying? What possible reason could my brother have to rob me?”_

_“Not, my dear sir, to rob you. If you would be so kind, my lord, please summon your daughter, Angela.”_

_The Baron rang a bell. Moments later a beautiful young woman with blond hair walked into the room._

Carrot sat up a little straighter. “Angua! I think you’re in this one!”

Angua froze. “What?”

_The moment she saw Bjornsson, the manacles around his wrists, she gasped. She rushed straight at Inspector Bowlen, beating his chest with her fists, but she was so dainty and frail that the Inspector barely seemed to feel it._

_“You bwute!” she cried, “What have you done to him? Welease my darling Bjorny at once!”_

Angua could feel the hairs on her body bristling. Last week, it would’ve been funny. But last week was a new moon, and she could feel her patience wearing thin as the moon grew full. She had the best part of a week before the change, but it was always so much harder to resist when she was annoyed.

_The Baron goggled at his daughter. “Darling?” he repeated._

_“Yes,” said Volmes triumphantly, “_ darling _. You see, my lord, burglary was never your brother’s intention. His true goal was to prevent the marriage of your only daughter to Bjorn Bjornsson by framing this honest young dwarf for burglary. But for the eggs, all the evidence pointed clearly to Bjornsson –_ too _clearly. The only eyewitness account to place Bjornsson at the scene came from your brother, a man who has made his anti-dwarfish views widely known. But in his arrogance, he designed a crime that was too brilliant to spring forth from the mind of a lowly gardener.”_

_Angela gasped. “But Uncle Edgar? Why?”_

_The Baron’s brother’s face was contorted. “How could I not!” he spat, “I would have done anything to prevent this match! Did you think I could rejoice as you threw yourself away on some lowly six-foot-tall, very well-built dwarf with excellent prospects? You, the fairest maiden in the land – and with the noblest pedigree of any girl in the city?”_

Angua snorted.

_Angela was crying, prettily. “But Uncle Edgar,” she wept, “w-why?”_

_Uncle Edgar stared at her. “I just told you why! How could you have chosen such a man for your husband when you could have chosen me?”_

“Eurgh,” said Carrot.

_“Eurgh,” said Turnip._

_Angela fainted. Bjornsson lunged forward and caught her, the girl’s tiny, fragile frame lost in his big arms._

_Uncle Edgar began to shake. His nails began to lengthen as the change came upon him. “Rrremove yourrr hands frrrom my niece, you filthy –”_

_“That’s quite enough of that,” said Volmes, who took out a crossbow and shot Uncle Edgar in the shoulder. Uncle Edgar staggered backwards, whimpering, as Inspector Bowlen hurriedly took the cuffs off Bjornsson and put them on Uncle Edgar. “Silver-tipped crossbow bolts,” he explained to the Baron, “I do hope you don’t object too strenuously, but it was the only way.”_

_Inspector Bowlen escorted Uncle Edgar to jail while Bjornsson revived Angela. She placed a thin, delicate hand upon her brow when she awoke. “Bjorny? Is it over?”_

_“Yes, my diamond,” said Bjornsson, lifting her up, “you have nothing to fear.”_

_“Oh Bjorny,” Angela sighed, “I don’t know what I would do without you to pwotect me. Twuly, I would be lost without you. To think what the howwid world would do to such a fwagile, silly girl like me with no-one to defend her…”_

_She burst into tears. The Baron clapped a hand on Bjornsson’s shoulder by means of giving his blessing, too overcome to speak._

_Turnip cleared his throat. “Pardon me, Miss,” he said, his honest brow furrowing, “but aren’t you a werewolf, like your uncle? Surely you wouldn’t need protecting.”_

_Angela turned her big, blue eyes on Turnip, who flushed. “Goodness, no,” she said. “Girls can’t be werewolves. Why ever would you think that?”_

Carrot laid the paper aside. “Never mind, Angua,” he said, sounding a touch disappointed. “I don’t think that one was meant to be you after all. She wasn’t even a werewolf.”

Angua paused halfway through grinding her teeth. The disappointment in Carrot’s voice had been genuine. He’d been excited at the thought of finally appearing in the Hemlock Volmes stories – weeks of people yelling “Oi! Turnip!” at him had not sunk in – and she was touched that he’d wanted to share that with her.

She sat on the end of the bed. “I’m not sure if Bjornsson was meant to be you, either,” she said, taking his hand. “You’re not even a gardener.”

* * *

Vimes was still two streets away from the offices of the _Ankh-Morpork Times_ and he was already grinding his teeth together. Carrot walked beside him, occasionally casting him a nervous glance. Vimes had started the walk with a cigar in his mouth, but as they got closer to the offices he’d bitten down too hard and it had split open. Ten minutes later, he was still picking bits of tobacco out of his mouth.

“I think it’s best if you let me do the talking, sir,” said Carrot, as the offices came into view. “You can be a bit…forthright.”

Vimes grunted. He was still smarting from his meeting with Dibbler. _Dress up for the kiddies_ , he thought, mutinously. What would Dibbler expect him to do? Prance about in a stupid hat saying ‘indubitably’, or make things up about people based on what they had in their pockets?

“How’s Angua?” he said. “I saw the latest one. That was supposed to be her, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t think so, sir,” said Carrot, innocently. “Angela wasn’t even a werewolf.”

Vimes ground his teeth again.

They turned the corner and reached the offices of the _Times_. It looked as it always did: busy. The door was permanently propped open for an endless stream of dwarves, trolls, humans, goblins and the undead. The vast majority of them were carrying amusingly-shaped vegetables. Vimes felt an unexpected warmth at the sight of it. No matter how high-brow the _Times_ tried to be, there was always going to be some idiot who would try and get a picture of a vegetable shaped like a tonker in it. It was oddly endearing.

What was not endearing was the sign in the window. It read: “the official home of Hemlock Volmes!!”

“Oh god,” Vimes groaned.

They went inside, squeezing past the enormous, clanking presses. After some shouting over the printers, they were eventually shown into de Worde’s office, a tiny room which had somehow been stuffed with two desks, multiple filing cabinets, and every piece of paper Vimes had ever seen.

De Worde gave them both a smile. “What can I do for you two gentlemen?” he asked.

 _Gentlemen_ , thought Vimes. It was all right when other people said it, but de Worde hadn’t lost that Guild of Assassins accent yet. The word sounded so much worse coming out of his mouth.

Carrot smiled back. “Oh, you know, we were in the area and thought we’d drop in, see if you haven’t had any more trouble after young Basalt was attacked.”

“Oh no,” said de Worde, sitting down, “we managed to get the last of the teeth out of his arm. He feels terrible for Mr Turner, though. He did send him a fruit basket at the Lady Sybil but of course, after biting a troll Mr Turner was…well, rather unappreciative.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Carrot, “I’ll pop round to the Lady Sybil and have a word. I’m sure Mr Turner can still enjoy a smoothie, at least. Business is booming, I see!”

De Worde tried to give a self-effacing laugh but still looked faintly smug. Vimes tried not to glower. “Oh, we’re muddling along as best we can, Captain!” said de Worde.

“I’m very interested in the new direction you’re taking with these serial stories,” said Carrot. “The Guild of Publishers not giving you any trouble?”

De Worde’s eyes flicked to Vimes. Vimes tried to give a friendly, I’m-not-about-to-go-spare smile, and de Worde flinched.

“No, we’ve sorted it all out with Mr Slant,” said de Worde, his hand creeping towards his notebook. “But now that you’re here, I wonder if I could ask your opinion of the Hemlock Volmes stories.”

Vimes’s temper twanged. “Why would you want to know that?” he growled.

“Well,” said de Worde, his smile faltering, “you’re something of a literary figure now, Commander. Our anonymous author is not the only writer to have been inspired by your life. Perhaps you would care to comment on –”

De Worde faltered at the look on Vimes’s face.

“Oh, I’m not sure that’s strictly Watch business,” said Carrot, “but it’s always rather flattering to see the efforts of the Watch immortalised in print. Of course the details of any ongoing investigations could and should be kept out of the public eye, both to protect the individuals involved and for the civic good, but I applaud the ingenuity of this anonymous author in coming up with cases and characters which are both original and entertaining. A very welcome addition to the fine Ankh-Morpork literary tradition.”

There was a stunned silence. Vimes was the first to break it, having got used to Carrot’s occasional off-the-cuff civics essays.

“Yeah,” he grumbled. “Like Carrot said.”

“And of course,” Carrot continued, “I’m very much looking forward to seeing if I will end up playing a part in a Hemlock Volmes story.”

De Worde’s eyes widened. “You…you don’t…”

Carrot looked genuinely disappointed. “Angua tells me that Turnip is supposed to be me, but that can’t be right. He’s not even a dwarf! I did think that Bjornsson was closer, but of course I’m not a gardener and I have to say, Bjornsson wasn’t a very convincing dwarf. He confused a pickaxe and a mattock!” Carrot chuckled. “I’d hate to see him down a shaft.”

De Worde stared at Vimes, sheer disbelief scrawled across his face.

“If it’s not too much to ask,” Carrot went on, “could you put us in touch with the author? I’d love to see what he’s got planned next.”

De Worde sat back in his chair and smiled. “You know, Captain, you almost had me there.”

Carrot frowned. “Excuse me?”

“I must say, I never realised you were such a good actor,” said de Worde, pushing his notebook aside, “but you’re very convincing. I’m afraid I can’t help in any case. The author insists on complete anonymity. I receive the packets on my desk every week and all the contracts are drawn up through Dibbler, for my sins. I couldn’t introduce you to the author even if I wanted to.”

Vimes leaned forward. “They’re placed on your desk every week? Who puts them there?”

“Oh, people leave things on my desk all the time, Commander,” said de Worde, “we’ve got so many people coming and going it’s hard to keep track of them all.”

“And you aren’t concerned that someone will steal something?”

De Worde smiled. “We’re fully paid up with the Guild. Besides, all the important things are in here,” he said, tapping his notebook. “Someone waltzes off with the biscuits every now and then, but that’s not too high a price to pay for a good story.”

Vimes stood up. No leads at the _Times_ , then, if de Worde left his office door unlocked and open to the public. He made one last stab. “It isn’t you, is it?”

De Worde laughed. “Commander, I’ve spent the past few years having to prove everything I put in print is true,” he said. “I don’t think I could make things up if I tried.”

They left the office, and de Worde saw them out, shaking hands with them both at the door. “That was quite the trick you pulled, Captain,” he said, as Vimes and Carrot were putting their helmets back on. “I can’t get over it. You were so convincing!”

Carrot looked confused. “What trick?”


	9. Chapter 9

_Volmes scrambled through the window and into Inspector Bowlen’s office, closely followed by a puffing Turnip. Since the Inspector’s mysterious poisoning, the office stood empty, still in the same state of disarray. His loyal and well-meaning deputies had barred Volmes and Turnip from entering while the Inspector recovered, but when crime was afoot, nothing could stop Ankh-Morpork’s greatest detective._

_Volmes helped Turnip to his feet after he stumbled and fell upon the office floor. “Keep watch, Turnip,” he hissed, “in case – hello. What’s this?”_

_A small and rather grubby monkey was sleeping on Bowlen’s desk. It was curled around Bowlen’s pewter inkwell, polished to a shine, and nestled in a primitive nest of shiny wrappers._

_“It’s an ape!” Turnip spluttered._

_“Incorrect, my dear Turnip,” Volmes explained. “Apes are much larger, nobler and more intelligent creatures than our friend here. Observe the markings on the long, prehensile tail and you will note that this is an aye-aye. Unless I miss my guess, this little chap has been most carefully trained and, were it not for the fortuitous discovery of Bowlen’s liqueur chocolates, we would not have stumbled upon it.”_

_Turnip gasped. “Has the poor beast been poisoned?”_

_“No. It is simply rather drunk. And clearly very fond of shiny things. Let us see what our diminutive friend was sent for…”_

_Very carefully, Volmes lifted the aye-aye by the scruff of its neck and handed it to Turnip. He then perused the papers upon Bowlen’s desk and found one which had been chewed and clawed almost to pieces._

_“Success!” Volmes hissed. “Our furry friend was sent not to steal from Bowlen but to destroy evidence of a case:_ this _case, Turnip.” Volmes held out the paper. “A notorious rogue who married and murdered wealthy heiresses – but this was from almost twenty years ago! The scoundrel was hanged! What could possibly – Turnip?”_

_Turnip was staring down at the sleeping aye-aye, an adoring expression on his face. He seemed not to have noticed that the aye-aye was clutching his own pocket watch. “Let’s keep him, Volmes.”_

_“I don’t see why not. What will you name him?”_

_Turnip screwed up his face in concentration. “I think…I think he looks like a Gobby.”_

* * *

Vimes was sitting in the antechamber to the Oblong Office, waiting for his meeting with Vetinari to begin. Unfortunately, so was everybody else. The heads of all the major guilds were in there with him, and Queen Molly of the Beggars’ Guild was the only one who wasn’t trying to smile.

Almost all of them were very carefully not reading the copies of the _Ankh-Morpork Times_ that were strewn around the room. The moment he had walked in, there had been a great flapping of paper and suddenly all the newspapers were very carefully lying under chairs, on tables, or sliding down the opposite wall. There had been a new instalment of Hemlock Volmes’s latest adventure, _A Box Full of Murder_ , printed today, and Vimes had been very disturbed to see a small illustration of his fictional counterpart on the front page. Worse still had been the special hats which were being sold on the streets of Ankh-Morpork. Vimes didn’t understand what was wrong with a perfectly good helmet, but apparently the headgear of choice for the fashionable detective was something that looked like a saggy tea-cosy with flaps on.

Lord Downey ostentatiously picked up a copy of the _Times_ and opened it with a flourish. If he hadn’t been expecting it, Vimes would have flinched. Instead he stared straight ahead while his entire body went _well, here we go_.

Downey flicked through the paper and, moments later, there was the sound of a fountain pen being uncapped. Vimes felt the little _click_ as though it had been a bolt loaded into a crossbow. There was the sound of some quick scribbling, and then:

“Hmmm. Eight across, eleven letters. ‘Too apparent to be doubted’. Ends in ‘ly’. Any thoughts, ladies, gentlemen?”

Vimes tried to focus on his breathing.

“Assuredly, perhaps?” Mrs Palm supplied.

“Too few letters, dear lady,” said Downey.

_Breathe in_ , Vimes thought, _nice and slow. Nice and calm, nice and –_

“Undoubtedly?” Dr Whiteface suggested.

Downey made a show of consideration. “No, that wouldn’t fit with three down. It would have to begin with ‘i'.”

Vimes’s hands tightened on the brim of his helmet. The metal dug into his palms.

“Oh, of course!” cried Mr Parker, “it’s –”

There was a _thud_ and a small whine. “Dear me, Mr Parker,” said Lord Downey, “I seem to have accidentally kicked you in the kneecap. I do apologise.”

“Never mind,” Mr Parker rasped. “I…I realised I couldn’t spell anyway.”

“Good man,” said Downey.

There was a moment’s silence. The Patrician’s off-beat clock ticked louder than ever. Vimes took another deep breath, trying to tell himself that the tick didn’t match up to the twitch under his eye.

“Hmmmmm,” said Downey again. “Eleven letters. ‘Too apparent to be doubted.’ Begins with i, ends in ly – Your Grace, I don’t suppose _you_ have any ideas as to what it could be?”

“None whatsoever,” Vimes growled.

“You’re being too modest, Commander,” Mrs Palm said, charm oozing from her every syllable. “Surely a man of your intelligence and character must be able to solve a simple crossword puzzle.”

“I’m afraid not.”

Lord Downey tried another tack. “Of course, that is to be expected. Forgive me, Your Grace, but when one has the benefit of a classical education such things come more naturally –”

The door to the Oblong Office opened just as Vimes’s temper was gathering steam. The other guild leaders filed in and Vimes put his face into his helmet for a few seconds when their backs were turned, breathing very deeply. When he followed them inside his face was blank, his hands were steady, and he only briefly fantasised about smacking the newspaper out of Downey’s hands.

The meeting went without a hitch and soon, the guild leaders were filing out again. Vimes turned to follow them, already dreading the resurgence of Downey’s bloody crossword trick, when Vetinari called out to him.

“One moment, Commander.”

Vimes lingered while everyone left. When the door was closed Vetinari fixed him with a look that skewered him to the spot and said “I gather you’ve found out about your literary counterpart.”

“Sir.”

“I shall take that as a yes. I do hope you are not letting this distract you from more important matters.”

“Sir.”

“I am sure you are well aware of how it might be received were the Commander of the City Watch to start intruding into such matters. I am also sure that you have more than enough to be getting along with.”

“Sir.”

The Patrician sighed. He picked up his cane and walked to the window, staring out at the fog that shrouded the city for a moment.

“Commander Vimes,” he said, “when one has ruled this city for as long as I have, one begins to notice certain patterns. Ankh-Morpork is nothing if not fickle. The city has crazes like any other, and few of them last.”

“Some of them do,” Vimes muttered.

“Some of them do,” Vetinari agreed, “and the ones that last survive because we are able to find a use for them. You are a resourceful man, Commander. Under your leadership the Watch has gone from a forgotten relic of the past to an institution upon which the city depends.”

Vimes squirmed.

Vetinari turned to face him, with something like a smile on his face. “I would be very surprised if you were unable to find a use for this too. Don’t let me detain you.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hands up everyone who spotted the clue to the author's identity in the last chapter!

_“But you must realise what this means, Turnip,” said Volmes, discarding the smock, floppy hat and false nose that made up his cunning disguise of a simple Lancre farmer._

_Turnip turned back around and goggled at his friend and mentor. “Volmes! But you…how…”_

_“Oh come, man, I wasn’t even doing the voice,” Volmes snapped. “You knew it was me. But no matter. We have far more pressing matters to attend to.”_

_Volmes strode across the study and pulled out case file after case file. “First, Lady Arbuthnot’s staged disappearance. Then the re-emergence of the enchanting Lady Ysabell. The theft committed against Baron von Unterwald, the poisoning of friend Bowlen and the attempt to desecrate the records of his cases. And not just that. The assault on my own trusted valet, Freddikins, the plundering of my family’s ancient estate, and worst of all – the very_ worst _thing that a blackguard could possibly do – the attack on that ancient and venerable institution and my own alma mater, the Guild of Assassins.”_

Vimes threw down the paper. “He’s doing it on purpose now.”

Nobby, who was seething in Vimes’s office, snatched up the paper. Ever since he had been immortalised as Gobby, people had been leaving shiny sweet wrappers in his locker and conspicuously hiding their spoons. They’d hidden their spoons before anyway, but now, they did it smiling. He was out for blood.

“That’s not actually the bit I wanted to talk to you about, sir,” said Carrot. “Keep reading.”

_“All of these heinous, awful, terrible and really dreadful things, but most particularly the attack upon my old school, which is surely the very worst thing that anyone could possibly conceive of – really, Turnip, they blew up the bust of me in the entrance hall to Scorpion House, all the trophies my family founded were stolen, and my name scratched off every single honours list in the –”_

Vimes could feel his ears burning. “How long does this bit go on for?” he muttered.

“Not much further,” Carrot soothed.

“’S all right for _you_ ,” Nobby muttered. “Least you’re _human_.”

Carrot frowned. “But I’m not in these stories, Nobby,” he said. “That Turnip chap isn’t even a –”

Vimes shook out the paper just as Nobby’s face went red and began reading again.

_“ – are all the work of one brilliant yet dastardly man. The most evil, disreputable and deadly genius we have yet faced, Turnip, and the architect of all of my misery. I have no doubt that his only goal is domination of the Disc, and I shudder to think of what horrors would be wrought if he should achieve his ends.”_

_Turnip looked around, confused. “I say, Volmes,” he said, “did you see where that farmer chap went?”_

_Volmes ignored him. “As you have no doubt realised, my dear Turnip, I am speaking of the infamous Professor Mortinari.”_

Vimes laid the paper aside. He sat back in his chair, pinched the bridge of his nose, and sighed.

“Right,” he said.

Carrot leaned forward. “I’m not saying the author has done anything wrong, sir,” he said, looking worried, “of course they should be allowed to say whatever they like. There’s nothing wrong with actually printing something like this, or writing it down in the first place. But…”

“But it’s not about who writes it,” said Vimes, dread trickling into the pit of his stomach, “it’s about who reads it.”

“Exactly, sir.”

Vimes stood up and went to the window. It was always an impressive move when Vetinari did it, and he needed to think like Vetinari now more than ever.

There had always been people who disliked the Patrician. Hell, thought Vimes, sometimes he was one of them. But Vetinari had made the city work, and whatever you thought of the man there was no denying that. You couldn’t say the same thing about the Patricians that had come before him – they had simply made the city work _for them_. The best of them had wrung out the city like a wet flannel. The worst of them – Vimes could still remember what the worst of them had done, in the cellar of the Unmentionables’ old place on Cable Street. But despite the fact that Cable Street had been silent for years and the city was thriving, there were still some people hankering after the good old days. In the hands of people like that, Professor Mortinari could do considerable damage.

Vimes sighed again.

“I’ll talk to him,” he said. “Don’t do anything until I get back.”

Vimes hadn’t turned around, but he could _hear_ Colon, Nobby and Carrot slump over in relief. He envied them.

* * *

Hemlock Volmes was everywhere Vimes looked. A drawing of his face stared out heroically from the front page of the _Ankh-Morpork Times_. Playbills were pasted on every other street, advertising ‘never-before-seen dramatization of the latest thrilling tale!’. Street-sellers were hawking Hemlock Volmes dolls, all licensed by Dibbler and carrying tiny magnifying glasses (‘now with REAL crime-solving equipment!’). That bastard at the Post Office had even done a special stamp with Volmes’s face on it, and to his dismay, Vimes had seen a letter printed in the _Times_ that said Volmes should be put on the new fifty-dollar note.

As he walked towards the palace, his sense of dread began to grow. The streets had never been quiet, exactly – Ankh-Morpork was not exactly a model city – but under Vetinari people could, more or less, say what they thought. Most people went to bed knowing that they would wake up again, instead of being hauled out of their homes in the middle of the night by faceless Particulars. You could build on that kind of certainty. In quiet moments, Vimes sometimes wondered if that certainty would last without Vetinari. The man was only human, and getting older just like everyone else. There would come a day when he would have to step back, and how much of what he had built would last when he did? Had the past few decades only been a temporary reprieve? Vimes had always assumed he’d never find out; Vetinari had the sparse, clean look of a man who might live forever, and now that Vimes was the wrong side of fifty all of his late nights, greasy fry-ups and heavy drinking were making themselves known. But now, with Hemlock Volmes’s face staring snootily out of every shop window, Vimes realised just how foolish he had been to think that.

_Never assume anything in Ankh-Morpork_ , he thought, as he climbed the Palace steps.

He was shown into the Oblong Office by a silent clerk. Vetinari was behind his desk, bent over some papers. He looked up when Vimes came in.

“Ah, Commander,” he said, not laying aside his pen. “You’re rather earlier than usual this morning, but no matter. If you’ll give me a moment, we can begin our briefing.”

“I’ve not come about the briefing, sir,” said Vimes.

Vetinari held up a finger and Vimes waited while he finished writing. He put down his pen and looked up. “Now. You were saying.”

Vimes cleared his throat. “I wonder, sir, if you’ve seen the latest –”

“Ah,” said Vetinari, smiling. “I suspected that might be it.”

“I – you aren’t upset?”

Vetinari leaned back in his chair. “Why should I be? A rather clumsy literary allusion but by no means the first, nor the last. And not entirely without merit. In politics, Commander, it can pay to remind people that one has teeth without being so vulgar as to show them.”

“But…sir, some senior members of the Watch are concerned that you being in these stories could encourage people to take action against you.”

“And should such ‘actions’ occur, I have every confidence in your ability to handle them appropriately. I am sure that you are aware that such an action would not be the first political crisis, nor indeed the first assassination attempt that I have survived. Do give me some credit.”

“But sir,” Vimes insisted, “you don’t know what this person is going to write next – you don’t even know who they are. What if –”

Vetinari held up a hand. “Please do not assume that I do not know something. It is most unwise. In this instance, allow me to reassure you. I do in fact know the identity of the author, and –”

“ _What_?” Vimes snapped. “And you didn’t tell me?”

Vetinari raised an eyebrow. “No. I did not.”

Embarrassment descended on Vimes like a heat haze.

“I appreciate your concern, Commander, but this is not your concern. No crime has been committed, and even if one should be committed in the future, I think we can both agree that the degree of responsibility carried by this author, as opposed to the perpetrator, would be minimal at best. Now if you don’t mind, I should like to get on with the briefing.”

Vimes was still floundering. “But…but sir, what if…”

Vetinari raised his hand again. “There are any number of ‘what ifs’. Please rest assured that I have planned for all of them. Really, Commander. You’re rather over-thinking this. A newspaper serial is hardly capable of sending us back to the days of Mad Lord Snapcase.”

Vimes nearly flinched. _How had he known_?

“Now. The briefing, if you please.”


	11. Chapter 11

_Professor Mortinari prowled across the ruins of the old Volmes castle like a tiger stalking its prey. Volmes and Turnip, both clutching their wounds, stood underneath the once-magnificent archway. Dutiful as ever, Turnip kept his eyes on the wooden chest between the heroes and this monstrous villain, for this contained the very secrets Mortinari had worked so hard to conceal. But Volmes kept his eye on his foe, vigilant and wary._

_“Enough of this, Volmes,” said the Professor, stroking his very sinister goatee. “You must know that you cannot win. Why, this chest was buried at your family’s ancestral seat, and I discovered its whereabouts before you even knew of its existence. You could never hope to match me.”_

_“Be that as it may, match you I shall,” said Volmes. “As long as I have breath in my body, I shall never let you destroy the seat of my ancient family. This is my birthright, and I shall defend it with my life.”_

_Mortinari laughed, evilly. “You really have no idea, do you?”_

_“Excuse me?”_

_“Did you never wonder how I knew so much about you, Hemlock? My network of spies is extensive, of course. I see everything you do, and I have seen it since the moment you were born. Not one move you have made has surprised me; you have never made a choice I have not anticipated. But it’s so much more than that. I know what you wrote in your fourth-form essay on slow-acting poisons at school. I know how you take your tea. I know your secret fondness for pigs’ trotters, even though they are hardly the food of a gentleman.”_

Vimes glared at the paper. “Nothing wrong with pigs’ trotters,” he muttered.

_“I declare that there is nothing wrong with the humble pig’s trotter,” said Volmes._

Vimes pinched the bridge of his nose.

_Mortinari ignored him. “Ask me how I know. I know you’re curious, Hemlock. You always have been. I think, in your better moments, you knew I was watching you. Ever since you were a child, you knew there was a shadow hanging over you. Wouldn’t you like to find out what that shadow is?”_

_“Don’t do it, Volmes!” cried Turnip, loyally._

_Volmes laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I must know, dear chap,” he said, sadly. He raised his head. “Why?” he asked the Professor._

_“Because, Hemlock Volmes,” said Professor Mortinari, “I am your father.”_

Vimes put down the paper.

He got up. He went to the window. He pressed his forehead against the cool glass and closed his eyes. And then, he burst out laughing.

Vimes staggered into a chair, still chuckling. To think that moments ago he had been irritated, even worried about what the Hemlock Volmes stories might do. Admittedly, that hadn’t been helped by the commemorative stamp, or the Hemlock Volmes action figure, or the article that the _Times_ had printed which suggested that ‘leading figures at the university’ believed that the stories weren’t being made up, but were chronicles from some alternate dimension where Hemlock Volmes actually existed.

Moments ago, he hadn’t realised just how daft it all was.

Young Sam barrelled through the library doors, his face flushed with excitement. “Dad, Dad!” he yelled, flapping a newspaper above his head, “you’re in the paper, Dad! They’re writing about your adventures!”

With a sinking feeling he couldn’t quite get rid of, Vimes saw the illustration crumpled in his son’s sweaty fist: one of Hemlock Volmes, of course, bravely pulling someone out of the path of a stampeding horse.

“It’s you, isn’t it, Dad?” said Young Sam, squirming with excitement. “Mum says it isn’t but it is, really, isn’t it? Only they’ve got your name wrong and I’m not in it. I think I’ll be in the next one, though. They’ll have to wait for my exploring ship to arrive before I get my turn, I bet.”

Vimes gently lifted the paper out of his son’s hands. “Well…”

He heard a shift and looked up. Sybil was standing in the doorway, watching them both very carefully.

“My adventures are a little different, lad,” said Vimes. “They can’t always put them in the paper.”

Young Sam’s eyes went wide. “Because they’re too secret?” he asked, in a whisper.

From the doorway, Sybil held up a picture. It was one of Young Sam’s drawings, which Vimes always thought were very good for a boy his age. It showed two figures, one of whom was shaped like a rubber ball and the other was standing and pointing at something dynamically, with a big cigar sticking out of its mouth. Sybil raised an eyebrow; the message was clear. _Don’t ruin this for him._

“They are,” said Vimes, gravely. “They aren’t always like you read in the paper –”

“Do you still swing on chandeliers?” Young Sam interrupted. “And have swordfights on moving trains? And say ‘aha!’?”

Vimes swallowed his pride. “Well, something like that.”

“ _I’m_ going to say ‘aha’ when I do my exploring,” said Young Sam, running to fetch an atlas. “I’m going to have a special hat like you do as well. And a boat. And I was going to swing on the chandeliers too, only Mum wouldn’t let me.”

He looked up at Vimes hopefully. “She’s right about that,” said Vimes, quickly.

“Well, I’ll have swordfights at least,” said Young Sam, opening up the atlas, “because of all the pirates I’ll have to fight off. Mum can’t be angry at me for fighting pirates, that’s allowed on ships. Anyway you’ll have to come too so that you can solve any crimes that they’ve done. But we’ll have to get a big ship so that we can put all their treasure inside. And the things I discover. And if we find a sea monster like this one,” he said, pointing at an illustration in the middle of a printed ocean, “we’ll have to fight that one too. Mum says it’s not real but how do you _know_ , for definite, Dad? I think…”

Sybil smiled, and closed the door.

* * *

In Ankh-Morpork, the sun began to set.

It set on Nobby, who was no longer angry. He had visited Dibbler’s new offices, and unlike Vimes, had been very interested to hear what Dibbler had had to say about appearance fees. His pockets were jangling, and he was feeling decidedly less irritated about a future which involved Gobby the Loveable Aye-Aye. Gobby paid well.

It set on Carrot, who had just made the easiest arrest of his life. An unlicensed thief had robbed a man and laughed when he’d seen that the nearest officer was Captain Carrot. He’d pointed down an alley, the man’s purse in his hand, and said “He went that way!”, and even in the cells two hours later the thief still looked shocked and offended that it hadn’t worked.

It set on Vimes, who had come home early. Three hours before he had been standing in front of a line of clerks, one of whom kept smirking when his back was turned and glancing at the collection of random objects which had been placed on the bank manager’s desk. Vimes had told Cheery to start off with that one and walked back home, feeling oddly grateful for idiots who thought that the best way to throw a watchman off the scent was to plant increasingly random Clues.

It set on Vetinari, who was still working. This was not unusual. Drumknott handed him a pile of papers. Vetinari flicked through them and handed them back, saying “Going over the waterfall is very fitting, I think.” The papers were then placed exactly where they had been taken from: William De Worde’s desk.

It set on Unseen University. The light filtered through endless twisting corridors, occasionally turning blue or purple if it passed through a haze of magic. It glinted off the cutlery in the dining hall as the wizards set to the meal which was either dinner or supper, but in practice it didn’t matter what you called it, because there was never a break between the two. It filtered through the endless tower windows, picking out gold leaf titles on the spines of ancient books. And, in the library, it gleamed on the side of a silver inkwell, as the Librarian picked up his pen and began to write.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, folks! Hope you enjoyed my nonsense.


End file.
